


Graveside Memories

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While at church after Marlowe dies, Will remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graveside Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Written for starfishchick

 

 

The preacher was talking at the lectern, about what, I could not tell you. The words washed over me, and I heard them, but could not comprehend them. My friend was dead. One of my closest friends, my bitterest rival, my confidante, my muse, my editor... He was gone. Christopher Marlow was gone.

The incoherent rage battered at my soul as I saw the man responsible. The aristocrat that had either killed him or had had him killed. I knew he saw me. I knew that was not expecting to see me there. He thought I was dead, that he had killed me and not Marlowe. I knew that his own conscience was being eaten alive as he watched me pace around the church. Dramatic? Yes. Of course it was. But if a playwright can't cause a scene, who could?

I glared at him until he ran from the church, unable to sit before God with a murder to his name. I felt well rid of him.

Leaning against the pillar I was standing near, I tried to remember the last thing he had said to me before his murder. I could not recall. Had we been talking about my most recent play? What frivolity. Or had it been later? I tried to picture his face, his voice, but nothing came. I had been so close to him, and so I could not imagine him as he was now, in the coffin, waiting for burial. I could barely think of him alive. Instead, the face of his killer kept flashing in my mind, floating up whenever I tried to see my beloved friend's face.

And of course, a part of me could not even imagine that he was gone. He was eternal, as was I. hHow could I go on living with him gone? How would I write without him to help me with my stories? How would his ideas ever see the light of day? They wouldn't, I thought bitterly. How could they? He would never write another word, never act another scene. He was gone.

I would trade all of the plays I would write for one of his that would never now be written.

_"Will, what are you doing?"_

I looked up from my cup. "I'm brooding."

Marlowe laughed. "I can see that. Why are you brooding? Isn't your Richard III playing as we speak?"

I sighed. "It is."

"Then what do you have to be brooding for? You should be celebrating!" He turned to the bartender. "Give this man a drink, your finest whiskey. On me." He threw a coin on the bar and the bartender poured a glass for me.

"Now, what are you brooding over?"

He sipped at his own glass of meade as I started in on the fine whiskey. "I am working on my newest. I am calling it Titus Andronicus, but I am stuck. It is a history, and I don't know the history. I have written myself in a corner, and I can't get out." I looked to him for help.

"Ah, Will, why another history? Is it what is required of you?"

I nodded miserably.

"Well, I have a book you may be able to use. I'll send it over tomorrow. It's called 'Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland.' It's by Holinshed. I kept meaning to mention it to you while you were working on Richard, but I had forgotten. It might help you on the history you seem so stuck on."

He clasped my arm, and I smiled gratefully.

"You are a savior, Marlowe. I wouldn't be able to write this without you."

He grinned. "So I take it you're going to grant me co-authorship on this one?"

I looked at him in horror. I would never be able to hold my head up in society if I did that.

"Will, I'm joking. I'm happy to help."

I breathed a sigh of relief as he left the pub, and when I got the book he sent, I used it for nearly all of the histories I wrote from then in. He was not lying about how perfect it was. He never would lie about something like that.

The cool marble of the column chilled my cheek, but I did not care. The cold suited my mood. I was cold all through and bone weary. I had killed him. Lord Wessex might have actually slit his throat, but if I had not given the man Christopher's name, he would never have had a reason. If I had not been so desperate to escape punishment, he would still be alive.

My mind flashed to another play, another time.

_"Marlowe!" I clapped him on the shoulder. "How are you this fine evening?" I felt on top of the world. My Titus Andronicus was finally finished and on stage, and it felt like nothing could go wrong._

"Dreadful." He sighed, his body slumping further into his stool at the bar. I could smell him from several paces away and knew he was deeply drunk already.

"What ails you?" I worried that there was something seriously wrong with my friend. He very rarely drank as deeply as he already had this night.

"It's this new play. I am so lost with it. I don't know what to do."

I sighed a silent sigh of relief. A play I could help with.

"Well, what is the problem?"

"I am working on this... Will, if ever we were friends, I need you to help me with this. I have this Jew of Malta, and I don't know what to do with him. He's rather cruel, like your Titus, actually, and I can't find a fitting end."

"Well, what has he done?"

I listened while he explained. It was hard sometimes to make out the slurred words, but I caught most of what he was saying.

"So he betrayed the governor of Malta, killed a whole nunnery including his own daughter, and betrayed both the Maltese and the Turks? He has no one left to protect him?"

Marlowe nodded miserably. "And you are looking for an ending?"

He nodded again. "It's obvious what needs to happen, Marlowe. You need to kill him."

He looked up from the table, startled. "But I like him, Will. He was driven to all of it."

I nodded understandingly. "I know he was, Chris, I know. But logically, there is no way he could survive. The people are angry with him for betraying them to the Turks, the Turks are angry with him for betraying them to the Maltese. He burned too many bridges. Let it be a tragedy of a Jew. Put in a prologue to introduce the tragedy if you have to. There is no saving your Barabas now."

He thought for a moment. "Will, you are a genius. The tragedy of a Jew. I love it." He stood up, suddenly sober. "I have to go and write it. Thank you, my friend." Without another word, he left, leaving me alone in the crowded inn.

I looked out on the graveyard behind the church and felt a pang. He would never have the chance to be buried here. He would never have a gravestone. He would never have a place for mourners to go to mourn. Instead, he had been dumped in an unmarked grave site in Deptford, a shame to the friends he had been drinking with.

It depressed me that such a great man, a brilliant playwright, would never have the finality of a proper grave.

I felt tear slide down my cheek as I silently mourned the death of Christopher Marlowe, my rival, my muse, occasional lover, and friend.

 


End file.
